"Down the Memory Lane: Department of English, MCC:" A Lecture by Dr. Narasingarajan Naidu

 

The Early-to-Class Club | Appreciation

ETC Club | 27th June 2024

Congratulations to the following students of the II MA English Class, for being part of the Early-To-Class Club Today!

1. Akshaya G

2. Harshina K

3. Hazel Wilhelmina F

4. Malsawmdawngliani Tara

5. Nehemy Deborah S W

6. S Anuradha

7. Vadhana Sivakumar

8. Vidhyalaksmi R

9. Aaron Leo

10. Alan Savio Jijo

11. Jomon Joseph

Keep up the spirit. We are so proud of you.

‘Sir, do we have a holiday on Monday?’ 😊

‘In Class’ Fun! 😊

#memoriesfromdiaries

25th June 1998

(This day, 26 years ago, from my personal diaries)

I was doing my II year BA English this particular year. Motivated by my beloved Librarian Dr. Manalan, I had just then started writing regularly for the Indian Express and The Hindu.

Well, back then, newspapers accepted our articles only if they were typed out in those good ol’ Remington typewriters of yore! 😊

My Head of the Department Dr. Natarajan was my real motivation. I used to write an article, and immediately take it to him for his expert opinions and corrections, and he used to patiently advise me on structuring my article in a graded way!

This was one such day, when I had typed out an article (with carbon copy) for Rupees Three, and posted it to The Indian Express (postage Rupees Two).

Coming back,

Today in Class, something interesting happened. Since our Professor Cruz finished his class five minutes earlier, he gave us time for an interaction. He then told us,

‘Whatever you want, you can ask me!’.

I grabbed the opportunity and promptly asked him,

‘Sir, do we have a holiday on Monday?’ 😊

Only hostelers know the importance of holidays you see! 😉

He gently replied with a smile, ‘Yes, it’s a holiday, because of accreditation day for Colleges’.

"From ideas to business models, the innovation park will handhold students and innovators" ❤️

MCC’s Innovation Park – A First for Arts, Science Colleges in India!

24th June 2024 | Times of India

Today’s Times of India, Chennai Edition

Kannan, a banker, is interested to promote palm jaggery powder and other products as a healthy alternative to sugar. But he needs help in scaling up the product.

Similarly ideas such as making tiles using plastic waste, painting walls using bots, replacing unhealthy snacks with tasty millets are at various stages of transforming into startups and get incubated at Madras Christian College’s innovation park, the first-ever park in a liberal arts and science college in the country.

The 45,000 sqft ‘MCC-MRF Innovation Park’ which was built for ₹30 crore is likely to be opened in July. It boasts of facilities such as tinkering lab, rapid prototype lab, entrepreneurship café, co-working spaces writers corner and several meeting halls.

“From ideas to business models, the innovation park will handhold students and innovators. It was built under corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative by MRF,” said Paul Wilson, principal of MCC.

The building has a biophilic design integrating forest eco-system without cutting any trees and will meet 50% of its power demand through solar energy.

“Creating a culture of innovation in arts and science colleges will be a challenge. We are starting an innovators club and offer a one credit course on innovation,” Paul Wilson added.

Further, an internal assessment in the three-year degree programme will be devoted to ideation in which students will be awarded marks for potential innovative ideas.

The entrepreneurs café has four-seater and eight seater office space for small startups and they can rent the space. Further it also has a ‘pitch stage’ to showcase their projects to live audiences. Food-based startups also will be allowed to do pilot studies in the cafeteria. It will also have an amphitheater to host concerts, lectures and cultural performances.

The innovation park will also house five centres including nanomaterials research and innovations, computational informatics, big data analytics, psychometric research and business data analytics.

To keep the tradition of gutters in MCC, the innovation park also has a gutter classroom where students can attend meetings sitting on channel-like structures to discuss ideas.

The park also has research labs where students from all science departments can do interdisciplinary research.

“Any student or innovator, even from outside the college, can come and pitch the idea,” said C Aarthi Ram, head-operations, MCC-MRF Innovation Park.

In the first few months, the innovation park is expected to incubate around 30 startups.

“Our focus areas will be climate smart agriculture, precision healthcare, smart materials, ed-tech and livelihood empowerment. It will be one of the largest facilities dedicated for innovation in a liberal arts and science college," she said.

MCC Ranks FIRST in SOUTH INDIA

 In the latest rankings from India Today, in their Magazine Issue dated 1st July 2024, Madras Christian College ranks FIRST among Colleges in South India.

Added joy to know that the Department of English, MCC, has climbed one spot to get into the ALL INDIA SECOND RANK in the BA English Programme among Colleges in India.

Up Up MCC! Viva la MCC! 

"Conversations are uniquely human and, like us, they are complicated and sometimes chaotic and often rambling" ❤️

We Need to Talk | Musings

#newspaper #newspaperinlearning

18th June 2024 | Times of India

I happened to read a very interesting article in the ‘Speaking Tree’ Column in today’s Times of India, Chennai Edition, thanks to Dr. Selvakumari, Dept of Physics, MCC who shared the clipping with me, since the article also quotes some inspiring lines from our Principal Dr. Paul Wilson.

The article is written by Ms. Narayani Ganesh, daughter of the legendary Gemini Ganesan. [For newbies here on our blog: actor Gemini Ganesan is an illustrious alumnus of our College, and  he was also Professor with the Dept of Chemistry, MCC, before acing his career in acting, full-time!]

In this article, Ms. Narayani Ganesh emphasises on the importance of conversation in our day-to-day life.

Says she –

When we stop using our legs and arms for physical work or exercise, we’re told, they could get atrophied. If our limbs could shrink due to lack of use, how about vocal cords and tongue, I wonder.

Because we are talking less and less with one another. Well, we do, in a manner of sorts, over text messages, emoticons, social media and emails. But verbal articulation is on the decline, because the other means of communication have gained greater prominence.

Then she proceeds to quote our Principal Dr. Paul Wilson’s interactions with her, on her visit to the MCC-MRF Innovation Park, in Campus –

I recently visited my father’s alma mater, Madras Christian College in Chennai. The principal, Prof Wilson, gave us a guided tour of their new facility, the MCC-MRF Innovation Park, where research students’ cubicles in classrooms were open-ended. “Oh that,” explained Prof Wilson, observing my puzzled expression.

“All our lives, we’ve told students not to talk, and to just listen to the teacher. Here, the idea is to have them talk lots to each other as they work on their computers, so that ideas are exchanged and even newer ideas germinate in a synergetic way.”

For those on the spiritual path, satsangs are a good way to interact with like-minded people. Realised sages say that there is no loneliness if you are connected to the Divine, and you live a life of selfless service, staying active in the community, extending a helping hand, with enough room for self-exploration.

That is, you don’t have to look for companionship in a person once you make the connection with higher consciousness,

she concludes.

It is a very profound article with such valuable life lessons for all of us.

Indeed, this article proved the spark and the inspiration for me to share from a lovely book titled, We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations that Really Matter, by American Journalist and author Celeste Headlee.

Says Celeste –

In a 2012 survey of twenty-one countries, Pew Research found that 75 percent of people who own cell phones use them to text.

Two of the places where texting is most common are among the poorest nations: Kenya and Indonesia. Our reliance on technology is changing the way everyone communicates.

What effect does this have on our conversational skills?

That said, there’s a strong indication that the rise of technology, social media, and texting has led to a decrease in a few critical components of effective communication.

One of those components is empathy.

In 2010, a team at the University of Michigan compiled the results of seventy-two studies conducted over thirty years. They found a 40 percent decline in empathy among college students, with the vast majority of that decline taking place after 2000.

“The ease of having ‘friends’ online might make people more likely to just tune out when they don’t feel like responding to others’ problems,” noted an author of the study, “a behavior that could carry over offline.”

I find this development to be extremely worrisome.

Empathy, at its most basic, is the ability to sense someone else’s feelings, to be aware of their emotional state, and to imagine their experience. Not just to recognize that a coworker is sad, but to imagine what he or she may be going through and what it would feel like if you were going through the same thing.

To experience empathy, we must establish a connection between our idea of ourselves and of another person.

We have to ask questions like, “Would I like it if that happened to me?” “How would I feel if someone ran over my mailbox?”

Ronald Sharp, a professor of English at Vassar College, coauthored The Norton Book of Friendship with his lifelong confidante, Eudora Welty. He touched on this evolving definition of friendship in a 2016 interview with the New York Times.

“Treating friends like investments or commodities is anathema to the whole idea of friendship,” Sharp said.

“It’s not about what someone can do for you, it’s who and what the two of you become in each other’s presence. The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way, become a lost art. People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships [through texts and tweets] that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”

As Sharp points out, meaningful connection requires an investment of time. Conversations are uniquely human and, like us, they are complicated and sometimes chaotic and often rambling. That’s why another essential ingredient for good conversation is attention.

In one study, British researchers asked pairs of strangers to sit down in a room and chat. In half of the rooms, a cell phone was placed on a nearby table; in the other half, no phone was present. After the conversations had ended, the researchers asked study participants what they thought of each other.

Here’s what they learned: when a cell phone was present in the room, the participants reported that the quality of their relationship was worse than those who’d talked in a cell phone–free room. The pairs who talked in the rooms with cell phones “also reported feeling less trust and thought their partners showed less empathy if there was a cell phone present.”

The researchers concluded that the presence of a cell phone hurt the quality of the conversation and the strength of the connection between the people talking. With a cell phone just sitting on a table in the room!

Think of all the times you’ve sat down to have lunch with a friend or colleague and set your phone on the table.

You might have felt virtuous because you didn’t pick it up to check your e-mail, but your ignored messages were still undermining your connection with the person sitting across from you.

Even if we can manage to keep our phones in our pockets, pay attention to the person talking to us for more than eight seconds, and muster up some empathy to forge an emotional connection, there’s one more obstacle that technology presents: our willingness to have a conversation in the first place.

A 2014 Pew Research study found that people are less likely to share their views in person if they’ve discovered that their opinions aren’t popular on social media.

It’s an ironic development, given that in its early days, it was widely speculated that social media would serve as an inclusive forum for more diverse perspectives. But in practice, fear of disagreement online is shutting down the potential for lively conversations.

You can’t learn to ride a bike by reading about it. Biking is active and requires practice. The same is true of conversation. Thinking about it is not enough,

says Celeste Headlee.  

The South African 'Semi-Final' Curse! 💔

How South Africa started off on their ‘Semi-Final’ Curse Today!

Jinxed? 💔

17th June 1999

#memoriesfromdiaries

[This day, 25 years ago]

On 17th June 1999, cricket buffs across the world were witness to a thrilling, nail-biting and high-sensational match in World Cup history.

The match between South Africa and Australia ended in a draw, with the two sides levelled at 213 each. 

However Australia were able to seal a seat for themselves in the finals owing to better run rate! 

[Source: ANI]

It was from this particular day onwards, that the South African Proteas had earned themselves the jinxed tag of ‘Cricket World Cup Chokers’.

On an aside, the Proteas have always been one of the best teams in cricketing history. However, the dismal tidings that they have not been able to get past the semi-final stage of any of the World Cups so far, vouches to the fact that, the team has always failed in pressure situations, giving them the ‘Chokers’ tag!

Even earlier, in the 1992 World Cup semi-final, [South Africa's first since their return to cricket], the Proteas (South African Team) ran out of luck in the World Cup semifinal, after rain interruption played spoilsport.

In the 2003 World Cup, they had lost a must-win game, that they had played against Sri Lanka!

In the 2007 World Cup semi-final, the Proteas who were in a commanding position, lost the crucial game.

In the 2011 World Cup, semi-final, the Proteas lost to the Kiwis in their crucial must-win match!

In the 2015 World Cup semi-final, owing to miserable fielding by the South African side, the Kiwis chased a mammoth 298 in just 43 overs and won the match, leading to a disastrous loss for South Africa.

In the 2019 World Cup deciding match, Pakistan had a 49-run win at Lord’s, eliminating South Africa from advancing to the final stages.

In the World Cup 2023, South Africans watched in shock, as their cricketers were crumbling at the hustings, and finally lost the match to Australia.  

Will the Proteans wipe off the ‘choker’ moniker and become Titans of the Game ever?

Well, the answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind!

And yes, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel! 😊

Moving on now, to the personal side –

Well, I’ve always loved having parrots as pets during our childhood days. And so, during my college days, as I was in the hostel, I very badly missed our parrot ‘Polly’ back at home.

And so to compensate for the missing Polly, and having got leads from our friends, we went to a particular area in the city, where parrots were sold and got a parrot for Rs. 45/- and named him ‘Polly’ too, 😊 and well, Polly, gave us all, hostelers such joyous company during all of our hostel years! 😊

PS: Dear readers, please do not try having a native parrot as a pet! This was a quarter-century ago, when many youngsters back then, like me, were quite ignorant of the legal provisions concerning parrots as pets!

Most of the native ‘Indian bird species’ are illegal as pets in India.

The Wildlife Protection Act says that no one can keep wild birds that are ‘native to India’ as pets.

Anyone taking care of such birds must either hand them over to the forest department or release them in forests, lakes, and parks.

However, exotic birds such as budgerigars and cockatoos are allowed to be kept as pets. It is common for people to keep parrots as pets but this is illegal, as is keeping mynas and finches that are trapped from the wild and sold in markets.

Source on Pet birds: https://petfather.medium.com/list-of-birds-legally-allowed-in-india-2021-petfather-c4c4ac2e717a

“From you, Pappa” ❤️

Father’s Day | Ruminations

16th June 2024 ❤️

On the occasion of Father’s Day today, me thought of sharing with us all, the legendary Isaac Asimov’s musings on his father, from his autobiography titled, It’s Been a Good Life.

The incident also highlights Isaac Asimov’s earliest appointment with the art of reading!

Says Asimov -

‘I learned to read before I went to school’.

‘Spurred on by my realization that my parents could not yet read English, I took to asking the older children on the block to teach me the alphabet and how each letter sounded’.

‘I then began to sound out all the words I could find on signs and elsewhere and in that way I learned to read with a minimum of outside help’.

‘When he found out I could read, [my father bought] me a small dictionary, “so you can look up words and know how to spell them.’”

‘My first thought was that it was surely impossible to find some one word among all the incredible number, but after I studied the book for a while, the workings of “alphabetical order” became plain and I asked my father if that was how the words were arranged.

‘My father had clearly held back the information to see if I could work it out for myself, and was terribly pleased’.

‘[All this] gave my father the idea that there was something strange and remarkable about me. Many years later, he looked through one of my books and said, “How did you learn all this, Isaac?’”

“From you, Pappa,” I said.

“From me? I don't know any of this.”

“You didn't have to, Pappa,” I said.

“You valued learning and you taught me to value it. Once I learned to value it, the rest came without trouble”.

To all the lovely fathers out there who have made such a huge difference in the life of their kids, by valuing that ‘something strange and remarkable’ thingummy in their kids.

Dedicated to my dearest Dad who has been the greatest role model of my life! ❤️

PS: You may also want to read Ms. Narayani Ganesh writing on her Appa - Gemini Ganesan - MCC-ian, HERE!

Three Prime Ministers in Three Years! ❤️

Three General Elections in Four Years

12th June 1996

This day, 28 years ago, from my personal diary entry.

#memoriesfromdiaries ❤️

This particular day, almost three decades ago, assumes national significance for an important reason.

The 1996 general elections [held in just three days – 27th April, 2nd May and 7th May 1996] threw up a hung parliament, with no party having enough seats to form a government on their own.

This particular year, (1996) the BJP had made history by emerging as the largest party in Lok Sabha in the 1996 General Elections. The President of India Shankar Dayal Sharma had hence invited Vajpayee to form the government. 

Soon thereafter, Shri Vajpayee was sworn in as the 10th Prime Minister of India. However, since the BJP could not get the support of a majority of MPs of the Lok Sabha, Vajpayee resigned after 16 days in office. (16th May to 1st June 1996).

Suddenly there sprang up a bolt-from-the-blue surprise from ‘the United Front’, a cluster of 13 regional parties, who then staked their claim to form the government at the Centre with the support of the Indian National Congress. It was again a surprise when Deve Gowda was chosen as the Prime Ministerial candidate.  

Soon, Shri Deve Gowda was sworn in as Prime Minister of India on 1st June 1996. And soon thereafter, he proved his majority on the Floor of the House on this particular day, 12th June 1996. Sadly, however, his government lasted less than a year, as the Indian National Congress withdrew its support to the ‘United Front’ coalition in 1997. Gowda resigned as Prime Minister soon after.

So in March 1998, I.K. Gujral, [who was the Minister of External Affairs in the Deve Gowda ministry], was sworn in as Prime Minister on 21st April 1997. Sadly again, Gujral had to resign within a year, as he couldn’t prove a majority in Parliament.

Hence, to the shock of the entire nation, the Lok Sabha was dissolved, and fresh general elections were held in 1998, three years ahead of its schedule!

Yet again, in the year 1998, there was a hung parliament, and Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee took over as Prime Minister of India, once again, to form a coalition government led by the National Democratic Alliance (which was just then founded - in May 1998) with the outside support of the Telugu Desam Party.

Vajpayee had the support of 272 of 543 MPs. However, quite unfortunately, his government collapsed on 17 April 1999, since the AIADMK under Ms. Jayalalithaa withdrew its support.

This led to fresh general elections yet again, in 1999.

This time, the BJP-led NDA won a comfortable 303 seats out of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, securing a stable majority. Vajpayee was sworn in as Prime Minister on 13th October 1999. He went on to have a full five-year term as Prime Minister.

On the personal front - 

On this particular day, today, my best friend Thilak and myself – we both went to a theatre nearby, to watch the movie Rajali, starring Ramki, Roja, Silk Smitha, etc [directed by Velu Prabhakar] along with my close friend Thilak. It was one of Silk Smitha’s last movies, as sadly, she died by suicide in September of the same year (1996).

We also got a puncture in his cycle tyre sealed on this particular day. I also happened to meet my MCC School classmate Surendar who had scored 1,066 marks out of 1,200 in the HSC Examinations. I also got the news from my close friend Sunil that he had scored 850 marks.

You may want to read more on Shri Vajpayee, on our past blogpost titled, That One Crucial Vote, HERE on our blog. 

May God forgive our wicked souls! 😉

Applying at Loyola, ‘Madras’ | & ‘Newspaper’ Memories

Wednesday, 5th June 1996

[This day, 28 years ago, from my personal diary entry!]

#memoriesfromdiaries

#newspaper

Well, my tryst with the Indian Express dates back to a few decades ago!

[Yes! Up until 1999, it was known as Indian Express across India. But from 13th August 1999, the northern editions retained the Indian Express tag, while the southern editions started sporting the new moniker – The New Indian Express!]

This past diary entry that dates back to 28 years ago in time, is the real prompt for jogging my memory bigtime, and helping me recall some of those nostalgic days when the newspaper was our daily delight!

We used to have those monthly subscriptions for the Indian Express and The Hindu that came with an added delivery charge of Re.1/- per month.

First thing in the morning, there would be a real big sibling-fight for the day’s newspaper, almost every other day - Noted down faithfully in the second part of this diary entry! (My sister fought with me!) 😊

And since May & June were holiday times, Amma had prepared her trademark yummy biryani for us at home today, for the second consecutive day.

This was also the time when we all were busy applying to colleges in ‘Madras’.

Thilakaramanujan (Thilak) my classmate and bestest friend, had brought along an application form from Loyola College, Madras, (yes, back then it was Madras, and only from 17th July 1996 it became Chennai!) for both of us.

Since ‘deadline day’ was drawing near, he had resorted to ‘signing’ on behalf of his parents in the application form. I should confess that I too played my part in encouraging him to ‘sign’ thus! May God forgive our wicked souls! 😉

Back then, we had to get our mark sheets attested, and tag them along with the application form, and so later in the day, I went to see our Chartered Accountant Mr. Anandan to attest all my original certificates, before applying to Colleges.

Interestingly, an added contender for the newspaper of the day, was a young professor named Mani, (dad’s colleague in College), who happened to be our neighbour, as well!

You see, the newspaper man used to keep the day’s newspaper wedged to the grill bar of the main gate, and then giving a quick ‘cling cling’ bell from off his Atlas bicycle, he used to dart across with such nuanced alacrity to the adjacent localities!

Prof. Mani hence, made it a point to quietly hover around the main gate for that precious little ‘some time’, and quickly grabbed the morning newspaper, the moment it was wedged, and then, gently turning towards me gave off that added gladded glee! 😊

‘In five minutes I shall give it to you, Rufus’, he used to assure me, pacifying my frayed spirits!

I quite didn’t mind even if it was fifteen or fifty minutes.

But what bothered me the most was that, he used to chaotically flip through the broadsheet, and then, removing the pages from its neat arrangement, he used to file them up in separate sections and parts and fold them with such crumples and wrinkles all over! ☹

This is something that really daunts and dampens my spirits you see! 

As for me, the newspaper should, by all means, be read in the exact order in which it is arranged when it is birthed from off press.

This has always been one of my innate idiosyncrasies as regards handling a book or a newspaper, all of the time!

Yes! I really don’t like it when a person flips through a book or a newspaper, in haste, leaving behind trails and trails of crumples, creases and crinkles on them in the process.

It’s like - you enter a beautiful garden, and then leave behind a trail of damage, devastation and destruction behind while exiting it!

So yes! I do judge a book – not by its cover!

But by its owner! 😊

A Unique One-Year Pathway Program from MCC ❤️

 

Launching A One-Year Pathway Program to Master of Material Science & Engineering in University of Newcastle, Australia from MCC-MRF Innovation Park and School of Continued Education, Madras Christian College for all aspiring UG & PG Graduates of (Physical, Chemical, Life) Sciences & Engineering. ✨️

Features of this strategically crafted Program -

# Accumulate the credits for first year in Masters Program from MCC-MRF Innovation Park

# Save Up to 85% on your tuition fee for the first year.

# Get immersive learning experience from Eminent Researchers and Industrial Leaders

# Complete support on IELTS training, Educational Loan, VISA and more

# Gateway to further opportunities in advanced research in Australia and India

To know more, Register Today for a FAQ session with Dr. Ajayan Vinu, Professor & Director of Global Innovative Centre for Advanced Nanomaterials in University of Newcastle, Australia.

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https://cutt.ly/MCCMRFIP_MaterialScience

'Importance of a Literary Sensibility for Life and Living' ❤️

Law, Literature, Life | Ruminations

#newspaper #literarydelights

Students of literature are particularly interested in judgments or remarks in which the honourable judges embellish their observations with literary allusions!

I chanced upon one such observation by Justice Jayachandran, Madras High Court, in today’s ‘The New Indian Express’.

Today's The New Indian Express, 01st June 2024

Quoting from the news report -

The Madras High Court has quashed a case pending in a local court, registered against a man under the Pocso Act, for the alleged assault of a minor girl, whom he married later.

Equating their relationship to the story of Romeo and Juliet, the court said a lenient view on the law has to be taken.

“It is the case of Romeo and Juliet, which has ended in marriage and the enlargement of the family by the birth of a child,”

said Justice G Jayachandran in an order.

He raised the question of whether the judicial system should strictly comply with the law in this case or deal with with the humanitarian aspects of it. “Unfortunately, the Pocso Act is silent,” the judge noted.

Furthermore, powers conferred under Section 482 of CrPC has to be used for quashing the case against the husband in such cases; or else, the girl may be made ‘vulnerable to exploitation’.

The order was passed on the petition filed by the man, against whom an FIR was registered in 2018 for aggravated penetrative sexual assault, based on a complaint filed by the girl’s mother.

The case was taken on file by the mahila court in Allikulam in 2022. In the meantime, the man and the girl, who by then had become majors, married in 2020 and had a child. The girl had told the court that she married him of her own volition and they were leading a happy life.

In yet another judgement delivered quite recently, Additional Sessions Judge Anuj Aggarwal began his verdict with a quote from Swami Vivekananda, that says –

‘Thoughts live; they travel far!’

“We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”

The judge also quoted from British poet John Milton, on the fundamental right of “freedom of speech and expression,” -

“Give me the liberty to know, to argue freely, and to utter according to conscience, above all liberties.”

Well, Literature and Law are called twin sisters. However, while literature focusses mainly on creativity, the law abides by rationality!

Added, while literature serves to humanise society by imparting values, the law seeks to regulate society by prescribing law codes that govern society.

One reason why legal professionals make it a point to read literature exhaustively, just to make sure that they can comprehend the human psyche in all its variety, and connect it with everyday life and living, and to drink deep of ‘God’s plenty’ in the entire gamut of literature.

In this regard, it would be apt to recommend a very interesting book written by Richard A. Posner titled, Law and Literature. The book has been hailed as ‘The most clear, acute account of the intersection of law and literature’.

Posner is a judge of the U.S. Court Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

In this highly valued 1988 book, Posner observes that,

Law and literature are related to each other in interesting ways. Innumerable literary works, many of great distinction, take law for a theme, and feature a trial (Eumenides, The Merchant of Venice, Billy Budd, The Trial, The Stranger), abuse of judicial authority (Measure for Measure), conflicting jurisprudential theories (Antigone, King Lear), the practice of law (Bleak House), crime and punishment (Paradise Lost, Oliver Twist), the relation of law to vengeance (Oresteia, Hamlet), even specific fields of law, such as contract (Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus), inheritance (Felix Holt, The Woman in White), and intellectual property (William Gaddis’s A Frolic of His Own).

These examples could be multiplied manyfold. (Anyone who doubts this claim should glance at Irving Browne, Law and Lawyers in Literature [1883].)

Moreover, law is a rhetorical discipline, and the judicial opinions of some of the greatest judges, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, have literary merit and repay literary analysis. Opinions and briefs are like stories; they have a narrative structure.

A literary sensibility may enable judges to write better opinions and lawyers to present their cases more effectively. 

And the literary critic’s close attention to text has parallels in the judge’s and the lawyer’s close attention to their authoritative texts - contracts, statutes, and constitutions. The law even regulates literature, under such rubrics as copyright infringement.

Some law professors, moreover, have tried to make legal scholarship itself literary by incorporating narrative, memoir, anecdote, and fiction into their scholarship, and others have claimed that the study of literature in general—literature not limited to works that take law for a subject - can humanize the practice of law and the outlook of judges,

says Posner.

And as eminent critic Scupin Richard rightly avers,

Law governs lives! Literature transforms lives!